Thursday, November 28, 2013

I hope you're enjoying a wonderful day with your loved ones, whether you celebrate Thanksgiving or not.

When the turkey's picked clean and there's nothing left of the pie except for a few crumbs on the counter, I hope you'll visit me on the kickoff for the Betting It All blog tour. Thanks to Book Promotions by Literary Nook for arranging the tour.I'm likewise grateful to all these hosts and reviewers:

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

In less than twenty-four hours I will be
releasing my story, Clone, the Book of Eva. This work has been in progress for
over five years. And I promise it is different from anything else I have
written. For Clone isn’t a romance—it’s a love story, with a twist.

So, please join me Thanksgiving Day, November
28th 2013 as I launch the first book in the series.

Blurb

When a world leader’s daughter meets a
clone, a doomed love affair begins.

In the year 2087, a great war
erupts on the planet and a struggle to survive begins. One hundred-fifty years
later, the continent of America is divided into two factions, Aeropia and The
United Regions. There is a shortage of food and an abundance of illness,
leaving most to live on the scraps of the wealthy who wallow in excess.

This is the world Olivia Braun
inherits. Sick from birth, she wakes up from surgery with a new heart, only to
discover she is the youngest president of Aeropia, an empire that has created
and used clones to maintain their position of supremacy since the war. However,
Olivia’s rise to power is no accident. Before her transplant, she conspired
with a clone to free those enslaved, but the outcome is not what she expected.

Now, enemies hide among the
population, and even friends can no longer be trusted. Olivia must make a
choice that will decide the fate of an empire. Before her tale of corruption,
forbidden love and war ends, the mighty will be brought to their knees.

By a clone.

Excerpt

Eva stared at the
crowd forty floors below. Her toes hung over the ledge. She didn’t draw a
breath or feel alarm in the tightening of her belly as most would when they
faced death. The people clustered around the gates and paced along the street,
appearing as nothing more than bugs she could squash under her heel. Tininess
aside, the roar of fright reached her, rumbling through flesh and bone.

They’d gathered
around the palace because of the riots. They wanted her sympathy, her
reassurance things would continue as usual, that the towers they’d built for
themselves would not collapse.

The Aeropite
Commander of Joint Forces, General Michael Axis, stood near her on the deck,
clutching the rail, as though he dared not get any closer than the ten feet
that separated them. His knuckles were as white as his face, and for the first
time since they’d met, he truly looked frightened. All he’d worked for
threatened to die with her, and his soldiers, collared for the moment, were
about to be released. He could do nothing about it.

The wind whipped
loose tendrils of her coif, beating the strands against her face in an angry
assault. The fine silk of her suit snapped around her like a banner in a
hurricane. For the first time in her life, she knew her purpose, had no fears. Concede. Die. Fight. Live forever.

“Madam President, you
need to come off the edge.” He trimmed his soft words with a threat no one else
could hear. Sharp like a razor, cold like forged metal, Michael used his
coercive blade as he always did, but this time, it had no effect. She’d stopped
caring. “Ana.” Angrier, a little harder, more pronounced. He might as well
scream, “heel, heel.”

Not
today.
He knew her name, and it wasn’t Ana. He’d put her here, given her this power.
When his plan failed, and he realized he could no longer force her to do his
bidding, Michael had stooped to begging. Pathetic as it was, she savored every
moment. No, you heel. The smile came,
tied to joy, something she’d waited a lifetime for. Oh, she planned to finish
this, but not as he intended. “They’re free.”

“Don’t do this. Your
country needs you. The people are frightened. I have no idea what to tell them.
There have been murders, clones that have somehow broken free of their
girdles.”

Eva twisted slightly,
enough to make eye contact with Michael and catch the outline of several
figures clustered inside the room. There they stood, his grand audience, inside
the balcony doors, flash frozen puppets with no voice. Eva surmised they’d
accompanied him to talk her down, yet they did nothing to help. If they
discovered she wasn’t their leader, they’d certainly push her over.

The trigger he held,
well, that was different. Designed to bend her to his will. Useless now. She
didn’t care if he took her life. Her time had come, and he could not win this
standoff.

“Not somehow,” she
said. Hundreds of thousands were free of their bonds and tasting liberty for
the first time. In a few minutes, the soldier clones would follow, their
collars falling from their necks, their hands filled with weapons he’d put
there. Michael was a general with no control of his army, and they were about
to turn on him.

The people of Aeropia
would suffer for the pain they’d heaped upon the clones. He would pay for what
he’d done, and when the sun set and his body lay broken in the street, no one
would take pity on his corpse—or his human soul. If he had one. He could not
escape his fate any more than she.

“I feel for you that
you’ve lost your husband and friend. It’s a tragedy, but the people need you.
Your daughter needs you. Come down.”

Her wrist monitor
beeped as the last code locked into place and the satellite transmitted the
order to the soldier clone’s collars, releasing every last one. Michael glanced
at the blinking band. His face grew paler and he swallowed, as though he choked
on his own bile.

“You, bitch.” Boom. Loud blasts sounded around the
city, coming from every direction. “No,” he muttered. “You can’t do this to
me.” His slid his thumb over a button on the device in his palm and pressed.

Eva gritted her teeth.

Jab,
jab, jab.
Michael poked the button over and over, before he lifted his chin and scowled.
“How did you…?”

For several seconds
she held his gaze, waiting for the pain in her head, the ending he’d promised
if she didn’t do as told. Dante. “He
didn’t lie.” The words were not for General Axis, but to herself as she came
face-to-face with the truth. Dante had loved her. He’d freed her.

She’d killed him.

“Who didn’t lie? What
are you talking about?” General Axis’s eyes popped wide and his mouth fell open.
“You can’t do this. I…. What do I tell the citizens to reassure them of their
safety?”

“Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.”Let them eat cake. At least one queen
could really say it. And today, she was a queen. She spread her arms and
greeted the open air, falling forward into the storm, and back to the arms of
the man she loved.

As
forty floors rushed by, a young woman in the same tower began her tale about
the clone who freed the world. For the first time, she spoke of treason, lies,
and a forbidden love born in a time of darkness.

While you wait to
enter my world, take a peek at the other side of the planet—into the unknown. I
will be posting a chapter online every week until the story is finished, and
then it will be offered for free on Amazon, as part of the series.

Clone, the Lost
Chapters

Chapter Three

Him. “You are....”

I blinked, unable to do anything else. I’d
heard power was an aphrodisiac, but never had I believed it. Until now. The
room began to spin and I leaned back against the wall to avoid collapsing. He
was against everything I stood for, all I believed in. I’d seen his face on
wanted billboards. The ultimate bad boy. A man who could, as he’d said, save
me, or drag me down to the valley of the shadow of death, and in damn quick
order.

Slut. Tramp. Hussy. We had a thousand
names for girls that acted on the thoughts rolling through my head, and body. As he stared at me, my flesh, the
betrayer, continued to express ideas my mind refused to register. My nipples
hurt. They were so hard, I didn’t dare to draw a breath, for fear the fabric of
my top would rub against them. My clit
throbbed. My heart pounded and deep in my belly, a tension coiled, drawer
tighter with each second. Whore. I
would be considered a traitor to even feel an attraction to this man, let alone
the obvious way my body responded. The room began to shrink, but I couldn’t
turn away. He held me hostage in more ways than one.

He continued to hold my gaze. Enemy of the
people—the most dangerous man in Sententia. His name should have been a clue.
But my mind hadn’t absorbed that, too busy I was noticing his scent, the
intense blue of his eyes, the way his voice moved through me like a seductive
storm, saturating every inch of my body, bringing a heightened awareness of the
primal masculinity before my.

“So, you recognize me.” The corner of his
mouth twitched.

Oh, like he couldn’t tell. I’d never been
good at keeping my thoughts off my face. “Yes.” Iia’s breath hitched. Run! Escape! I’d be a fool to continue
to stand there and make ga-ga eyes at him. . Yet I did. The leader of the
radicals stood in my home and I didn’t make a move to call for help, or alert
my processor to contact the authorities. This was it. I’d lost my fucking mind,
and deep down I had a feeling he knew it.

“Iia Danner, I need your help.”

“I can’t help you,” I said, giving a slight
shake of my head. No, I couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Everything I’d worked for would be
gone, and for what. Delusions?

“You can’t, or won’t?”

“Both.”

“Then you leave me no choice but to prove
that I haven’t lied.”

“We can’t go out. Curfew. We’ll....”

“Shoot us.”

“That wasn’t what I was going to say.”

“But you thought it. Haven’t you wondered
what they do with those they catch breaking curfew—or any who oppose them?”

“No.”

He raised a brow and shrugged a pack off his
shoulders. Reaching into it, he pulled out a blue rubber ensemble identical to
his and tossed it to me. “Change.”

“Oh, hell no.”

“Suit yourself, but we’re traveling through
the sewers and you might find that you’ll come out cleaner after wearing that.”

I narrowed my eyes. Sewers? I’d been a fool to believe he wouldn’t consider it. Yes the
waste went to a decomposer and returned to the planet as a sterilized soil,
free of diseases, but the path it took to get there wasn’t exactly clean and no
way would I crawl through it. “No.”

He grabbed my arm and the room shook. I
glanced around for the cause, unable to locate it. The windows vibrated. The
lights flickered and snapped off.

“What’s that?” he said.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Let go of
me.” Jerking my arm with as much force as I could muster, I attempted to break
free, but he held tight.

“We need to go.”

No sooner than he said it, plaster exploded
from the wall, spraying them and pinging off the windows.

“What the hell?” Nicodemus released me and
spun around to face whatever came through the wall. It took me seconds to
realize it wasn’t through the wall that it had come, but from inside it.

At least seven foot tall, the thing that
could only be described as a gray skinned cyborg, and it stared at my
kidnapper. Eyes flashed bright red as it launched across the room at Nicodemus
with inhuman speed, grabbing him by the throat and lifting him into the air. He
gasped and flailed, holding onto the thing’s hand, trying to pry its grip free.
It brought him around and slammed his body against the glass. My window
spider-webbed at impact.

Iia took several steps back, ready to bolt,
regardless the curfew. I’d rather take my chance on the outside than with the
gray monster in my home, especially after I’d witnessed a display of its
strength. Four inches thick, the glass was made not to fracture, and the
android that had the rebel by the throat, made it look as thin as eggshells. What was that thing?

“Shall I kill him, mistress?”

I gasped. The voice, there was no mistaking
the voice. “Walter?”

Walter glanced back at me. “It takes
seventy-six pounds of pressure to crush a human trachea. I can apply over ten
thousand.”

I stepped forward and put my palms up. “No.
Please. Let him go.”

“Yes, mistress.” Walter released his grip and
Nicodemus dropped at his feet like a bag of stones, gasping as though he sucked
air through a flattened straw.

“You’re a robot?” I swallowed and eyed the
candlestick, wondering if I could get to it faster than the bot could get to
me. And if I did manage to grab it, would it even put a dent in the giant?

“I am a bio-droid. You do not need the
weapon. My soul purpose is to protect the Danner family.”

“How did you know...?”

“I calculated the angle in which you focused
your optical orbs. You’re heart rate is accelerated and adrenaline has surged
into your life fluids. There is a ninety-nine percent chance you will attack.”

“What’s the other one percent?”

“Lose consciousness.”

“Faint?”

He cocked his head. “Faint: To pass out, to
lose consciousness for a short period of time, often the result of the lack of
oxygen making it to your central processor. Yes, faint.”

“I don’t faint.”

“I did not calculate that you would. I
calculated that you would attack. Should I prepare for you to faint, mistress?”

“No, that won’t be necessary.” I took the
time to look him over and shivered. I’d lived here for as long as I could
remember and didn’t have a clue that he’d been plastered in my wall. “How long
have you been here?”

“I was installed by the original owner of
this residence, the man who built me and created the power grid. It is no
accident you live here. You were guided to this place.”

“My great, great, grandfather.”

“Grandfather: the father of one’s mother or
father. Ancestor. Biological creator through procreation. That’s affirmative.
He is my father by definition—my creator.”

“So that makes you what, Uncle Walter?” If he
was attempting humor, it wasn’t funny. I frowned.

“Yes. I am your Uncle Walter. Would you like
me to add this title to my response database?”

“Hell, no.” The last thing I needed was for
some rubber covered, giant bio-droid, calling himself my Uncle Walter. It was
hard enough to digest that he’d been plastered in my wall for over one hundred
and fifty years with orders to protect me, and somehow he’d guided me to
purchase this exact apartment. I didn’t really have any friends and adding the
title crazy to my list of attributes wouldn’t help.

Nicodemus sat up, rubbing at his throat. His
com on his wrist-pad beeped and Walter spun around. “Your communication device
states that several armed vehicles are approaching this residence. We have
discovered the identity of my mistress.”

“I already explained that to her. I just
didn’t expect they’d find her tonight.” Nicodemus said from a raspy voice,
still massaging his throat. Guilt clenched my insides. Walter could have killed
him and it would have been my fault. I might not agree with what he was
attempting to do, but that didn’t mean I wanted him dead.

Walter spun around and strode up to me. He
grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward the door. “We must go.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“They want the key, mistress, and they will
kill you to keep anyone else from getting it.”

“So, the rebel spoke the truth?”

“Truth: the state of being the case. Fact.
Reality. Veracity. Actual. Yes, he spoke the truth.”

“Then he goes with us.” I yanked free and
eyed the rebel.

Walter nodded, released me and walked up to
Nicodemus. He reached down and grabbed his collar, lifting him to his feet.
“Come with me.”

“I can walk.” Nic glared at my new protector
and shoved his hand off him. “And I’m not trusting a machine.”

“We do not have time for you to ambulate from
the premise, and it is I that do not trust you.” Walter hauled off and punched
him in the chin, knocking him out cold. He lifted him up and slung him over his
shoulder. “Now we will go.”

“The key? Where’s the key, Walter?” I glanced
around the apartment, my heart pounding. If what the rebel said was true? I
couldn’t leave them behind. Straining, I searched my memories for anything that
might be tied to it. Nothing. No jewelry, toys or anything from my past that
would qualify. “We can’t leave without them.” I shoved a hand in my hair and
scrunched my eyes shut. Where was it?

“You are the codes, mistress.”

My eyes snapped open. How could I be the
codes. I didn’t have any bio-tags that I was aware of. Nor had anyone told me
what it was. Could it have been something subliminal, buried in my brain as an
innocent memory? “I don’t understand.”

“DeoxyriboNucleic Acid. It is the
genetic material of a cell. It is the key—the code to shut down the system.” Walter’s eyes flashed
from red to blue and back. “They have arrived.” He snagged my arm, carrying
Nicodemus through the front door and down the hall as he pulled me behind him,
moving so fast he nearly took me off my feet. “We must leave now.”

“What? No.” Large glass windows loomed ahead
at the end of the corridor. Walter continued to pick up speed, heading straight
for them. “We can’t go out that way. It’s seventy stories up. Walter, stop. I
order you to stop.” I tried to tug free. My heart seized in my chest. The
behemoth wasn’t going to stop.

“It is the only exit. They are too close.”

“No. Stop. There has to be another way.”

“My primary order is to protect you. It
overrides all others, mistress. This will not kill you. Hold on tight.”

I opened my mouth, but nothing but silence
came out as Walter whirled around, gripped them both to his chest and used his
back to shatter the glass. The contents of my stomach rose in my throat when we
dropped over the edge. No stopping. Nothing to grab onto.

As we fell, Walter’s body began to shift.
Gray skin stretched over an exoskeleton that popped and clanged underneath
them. Bio-drone muscle rolled under the silicone-like flesh and his bones
became almost liquid for seconds, his body a pillow of water.

His grip released and we rolled off him,
freefalling face first toward death. Iia grabbed Nic, clutching the unconscious
revolutionary as though it would be a matter between life and death, pulling
him tight to me. My fingers went numb and any exposed skin stung. As the street
below drew closer, the man beside my remained blissfully unaware we were about
to die.

The wind beat at my cheeks, slapping my face
and eyes, shoving the screams down my throat. There was so much I had wanted to
do with my life. So many places I had wanted to go. I had wanted a child—a
family. But as death rushed toward me, I could only review the fuck ups, all
I’d done wrong. What if Nic was right. The codes would die with me.

My heart pounded so hard, the veins in my
neck felt as though they’d burst. Faster and faster the floors rushed by. We
could’ve only free fell twenty feet before he caught them, but Iia could swear
it was hours that I plummeted toward my death.

This time, large, metal clawed feet held
them. His body continued the transformation, above them. One hundred feet
before impact and just as I was certain I would die, a set of giant wings
snapped open and caught a current of air, lifting us to glide across several
lower rooftops.

My pulse throbbed and darkness swam before my
eyes. No. I wasn’t going to black out. Walter leaned right and left,
maneuvering between taller buildings. I swayed with him. Bright lights from
below rushed by. Wind slapped at my face and clothing, pounding against me in
icy rage. I tipped my face back to see what Walter had changed into. His long
neck curved and he looked me in the eyes. “You may faint.”